How to deal with non-realism?

loup-vaillant

From Being a Realist (even if you believe in God):

theists and untheists can and should meet half way and at least agree on the logical necessity of being a realist.

My mother, who doesn't call herself a theist (I think she's agnostic), doesn't even accept realism. She doesn't even agree with this:

There is something. All that there is, we generally call "reality". Note that by this definition, reality is unique. The corollary is, we all live in the same reality. We do not percieve it in the same way, but our perceptions and reality itself aren't the same thing.

Every description of reality that matches it is true. Every description of reality that doesn't match it is false. In this sense, truth is unique and universal.

(We can nuance the truth/falsehood dichotomy with probability distributions. Some probability distributions are closer to reality than others, and so on.)

That's little more than tautologies here. Yet it elicited an impression of being forced to believe. I know because she told me about the totalitarian dangers from such narrow thinking.

I'm happy to have finally found the root cause of our ongoing disagreement, but now, how can I deal with that? It looks pretty hopeless, but just in case, does someone have a suggestion, or should I just leave it at that? (My ego doesn't like it, but giving up is an option.)

Now I'm relieved to know that in near mode, she's a complete realist. This craziness only shows up in far mode.

From Being a Realist (even if you believe in God):

theists and untheists can and should meet half way and at least agree on the logical necessity of being a realist.

My mother, who doesn't call herself a theist (I think she's agnostic), doesn't even accept realism. She doesn't even agree with this:

There is something. All that there is, we generally call "reality". Note that by this definition, reality is unique. The corollary is, we all live in the same reality. We do not percieve it in the same way, but our perceptions and reality itself aren't the same thing.

Every description of reality that matches it is true. Every description of reality that doesn't match it is false. In this sense, truth is unique and universal.

(We can nuance the truth/falsehood dichotomy with probability distributions. Some probability distributions are closer to reality than others, and so on.)

That's little more than tautologies here. Yet it elicited an impression of being forced to believe. I know because she told me about the totalitarian dangers from such narrow thinking.

Now I'm relieved to know that in near mode, she's a complete realist. This craziness only shows up in far mode.

In general, my approach to dealing with such people is to stop talking about what's really true, and instead talk exclusively about what experiences I anticipate if I perform various actions.

We may not be able to agree on whether there's really a hammer in my hand or not, but if we can agree that if I do something I experience as swinging this hammer at someone's skull, the other person will reliably experience having their skull hit by a hammer, then our disagreement doesn't matter much.

Of course, as you say, ego gets tied up in having other people talk about the world in ways that match my preferences.
I try to reject that when I find myself doing it.

In general, my approach to dealing with such people is to stop talking about what's really true, and instead talk exclusively about what experiences I anticipate if I perform various actions.

Talking about your anticipated experiences rather than the Truth is what many people mean by anti-realism.

5The Dao of Bayes14y

Agreed - I've found that most people do have fairly solid anticipations, even when they refuse to accept a realist philosophy. Failing that, it's their fault for perceiving that hammer in the first place, am I right? ;)

16

How to deal with non-realism?

16

16

16

How to deal with non-realism?

16

16